Match dot I seriously paid money for this?

A co worker told me I should join match.com.

These couples are always coming in to our work, looking at engagement rings, with stories of how they met online.
"I really think you should give it a try," she encouraged me.
"I think it will really take your dates up a notch."

Then, another co worker joined the site without even knowing the conversation we'd been having.
I couldn't take the peer pressure.
It was like 7th grade homeroom all over again.

Actually.
I just don't feel ready at ALL to meet someone new.
(Did I mention I'm still totally in love with my ex boyfriend who I broke up with?)
So I thought now was the PERFECT time to join a dating website.
Or rather, PAY for a dating website.
The timing is wrong.
And that's always when they say you meet your dream boat.
So bring it.
Just try and charm the pants right off me.
(Oh, like I'd even be wearing pants on a date. Pssh)

I've been on Okstupid for years.
Mostly for entertainment.
Every woman should have an Okcupid profile if only to feel pretty on those days she's feeling undesirable.
There are always world of warcraft trolls writing you poetry about what a goddess you are.
"You're hot enough to melt something unmeltable."
How fucking sweet.
And as clever as you are handsome.

I also joined Match because I'm so afraid of being a doormat.
My ex told me he needs some time to figure things out and he doesn't know if we're over for good.
How very reassuring.
But he hasn't said I Love You in two months and I have no idea what the hell I'm waiting for.
Nothing is going to magically change if I hold my breath and spend every night with my girlfriends.
I am not the kind of woman to wait for any man.
Good things come to those who wait?
How about, he who hesitates, loses.
As in, me.
Minus one buxom redhead.

Do you have any idea how many idiots are drooling over the chance to get me drunk and french me?
And I realized something.
The only reason to put up with shit like this, the indecisive, wishy washy uncertainty of my ex, is if the sonofabitch is your husband.
And son, this fool ain't my husband.

So, with timing seeming terrible and my co workers ardent faith that the caliber of people on a site you're paying for therefore being so much higher.....
P.e to the r.t compounded continuously, if I invest this many dollars into this many months then I'll have......
a true blue dreamy mcprince charming!

Right....?

Except there seem to be just as many undesirables on this site and possibly even FEWER desirables.
I actually paid for this??

Let me fill you in on a little secret.
The only time that money actually buys beauty is when you're a chick in Sephora.
I hate online dating.
Hate it hate it hate.
Men are such flakes.

I have a hard enough time trying to find a man with a stronger temperament than me.
Behind a computer?
They are spineless Mcjellyfish.

But don't think I'm not gonna get my money's worth.
These suckers are my blog fodder waiting to happen.
If I can't find Prince Charming then I will find his idiotic cousins.
And be nothing, if not entertained.

Cheers.

I'm weird. And fucking fabulous.

I like to write.
I'm emotional and always write what I feel which is usually a bad idea.
I don't have a filter.
I speak my mind and my mind is sassy.
I'm messy.
My bedroom floor has been covered with clothes since I could walk.
My car is not much better.
I love cats.

I hate the color orange and women who are always on diets and dogs and cowards.
The movie 'Tangled' always makes me cry.
So does 'Steel Magnolias.'
I once made a date with a guy just because the other guy I was dating talked to another girl.
I'm irrational and passionate and jealous.
Possessive would be an understatement.
But I need my space.

I've never stayed friends with an ex and I always wish I could.
I'm loyal to a fault.
I don't understand how people can just never talk again.
It still makes me sad that the last thing my longest relationship ever said to me was Fuck Off OK?
I'm terrified of my current ex boyfriend being as mean.

I want to get married.
I don't want kids.
I want a man who tells me I look beautiful every day.
I want him to take pictures with me and hold my hand and give me presents just because he thought of me.
I want him to like my Dad.

I don't like being judged.
I like being held.
My ex told me he didn't want to be with me because I was bad with money and I wasn't clean.
My weaknesses should be safe under your strengths not isolated and scrutinized.

I want to travel.
I want to use my passport.
I want to meet a man who means it when he says I love you.
I'm so tired of men who run away from their feelings.

I sleep with stuffed animals.
And I like to eat in bed.
I have an insatiable appetite when it comes to sex.
And if he doesn't hold me afterwards it really hurts my feelings.

I don't like knowing my guard is up again.
I know it's gonna take a lot of work from this next guy to get my wall down. Even a brick.
But I'm tired of being sad.
And I'm ready to make memories with someone who wants me there.

I don't like rock climbing.
And I don't like japanimation.
I only like cooking if it's with someone.
I love God.
I pray he orders my stumbling footsteps.
Even though I'm bound to muck them up again.

I feel guilty after I'm mean.
And I am usually the first to apologize.
I'm a sucker for a good hug.
And a man in a three piece suit.

I miss my friend.
But I hate inconsistency.
I want honesty.
I want someone who loves that I'm so weird and so wonderful.
And who writes me back.
Loving words.
Always.

The Great Fast

I'm having an Eat, Pray, Love kind of Spring.

Is it even technically Spring?
I know it's almost Easter and the beautiful cherry blossom trees have been making me sneeze for weeks.
Allergies. Pastels. Yep.
Most certainly sounds like Spring.

I'm reeling from a break up.
Except that really isn't accurate.
Because it's not like we hate each other or never want to see each other again.
It was actually my doing.
I initiated the breakup.
And he sent me roses the next day.
The first time he'd ever bought me flowers.

He at least has a wicked sense of humor, no?

I hate this stage.
The trying to understand and make sense of it all stage.
Because it never helps and you never actually figure anything out.
You can speculate and postulate and maybe years along the line you'll have a mostly accurate objective gauge of it all.
But right now I just miss my friend.
And I miss the sex.

He's not ready for something serious.
Which makes it hard for my little girly brain to understand why he was so adamant about saying he loved me and wanted me in his future all those months.
We change our minds.
We're fickle.
And we lie.

The weird part of it all is that as much as I want to be back with him, I also just want a new relationship.
I never get to be the girl who jumps from one lovers arms to another.
I'm like a humpback whale.
I have one great love and then don't even get close for y.e.a.r.s.
Lord have mercy.

What I would give to be like those women who are so busy meeting some new fabulous guy that they don't even have time to process their last relationship.
I have a girlfriend who met the current love of her life while she was still living with her previous love of her life.
She just upgraded to a new and improved model and within weeks they're jetting off to Vegas and color coordinating their outfits.
No tears. No 'Why oh why' just out with the old, in with the new.

I don't think I'm built for that kind of transition.

I went out with a guy this week who kissed me at the end of our date.
And I should have been thrilled.
He's cute and we had fun and he thinks I'm the bee's knees.
But I just felt weird.
I felt weird being kissed by someone who wasn't the man I'm still in love with.

But I know I have horrible taste and no sense when it comes to men!
I found these old notes from a year and a half ago, when I was hung up on the douchiest of douchebags, before I met Mr. Cartier.
He was such an overwhelmingly obvious epic mistake and yet I still got my feelings in a twist over it.

So now, I've made an escape for myself, at a friend's beach house, thinking that somehow if the ocean was near, everything would magically piece itself together and life could make sense again.

But it doesn't.
And I told Mr. Cartier that we needed to have nothing to do with each other for awhile.
Because he "doesn't know what our future is" and I am not the kind of woman to sit and wait for any man.

So I'm using this time to move on.

But it's really fucking bittersweet trying to train your heart to stop loving someone who isn't strong enough to choose you.
He loves me, with a boy's love.
And I am longing for the love of a man.

Time does funny things to us.
I used to think waiting was romantic.
And now I know romance is a most inconvenient, ridiculous ruse stirring discontent in the hearts of those who'd truthfully be overjoyed with contentment just to lay in his arms, snores stirring their sleep.
But still smiling, that silly fool is mine.

A party just isn't a party without your boss

I actually wrote this a couple months ago and am publishing it now. But rather than edit what I originally wrote, I'm just keeping it as is. Timelines n such.


My work is throwing its annual company holiday party.
After all the holidays have passed.
Apparently we're too damn busy during the holidays to have time for a party so they wait til the year end inventory has occured after the New Year and then we all get together to "celebrate the holidays."
How grand.

I'm fixing to move in twenty-one days but I know if I tell my co workers I can't go to the party because I have to clean my room it will incite some hateful glares.
But truth be told I don't wish to spend time with these assholes if I'm not getting paid for it.

Let's see, there's the guy who daily tells me how much he wants to put one of my tits in his mouth and let's not get him confused with the manager who sexually harassed me.
Because it is perfectly normal to call you twelve times when you don't answer your phone.
When they're drunk.

And nothing is sweeter than the jealous caddiness of a girl whose way of winning your approval is to be a bitch.l

I told a co worker once who was wearing a berry colored blouse that all she needed was a berry lip to match and she'd be absolutely fabulous.
The next day the wannabe bitch showed up wearing a similarly colored blouse and though she rarely wore lipstick, she donned a matching berry lip.
I purposely said nothing about it all day just to piss her off.

Of course my caricatures are gross exaggerations.

I've learned my lesson from those cosmetics wenches, anything I write can and will be used against me, so of course, the entirety of this all is PURE FICTION, baby!

Any coincidences with truth are pure happenstance.
Naturally.


There are several fabulous freaks I do enjoy working with it's just, it's not like this is my birthday party and I can create the guest list.
Everyone's invited.
It's like having to pass out Valentines to everyone in class when you're in second grade.
"But I don't want to give one to Brandon! Brandon's GROSS!"

Sigh.
So I have no choice but to decline the invitation with some dulcid ladylike retort of, I just don't wanna.

I will probably spend my evening pretending to pack my messy apartment, repainting my nails or playing Bejeweled on my new Ipad.
That game is really fucking addicting.
It's kind of unnerving.

Of course, I may also ponder the complexity of the awesome new guy I've been seeing.
My ex boyfriend.
But that's another fucking story.

The bums who love me

I spend a lot of time in the city and something rather amusing has happened.
I've made friends with the local street urchins.
Yes, those lovable, grumbling, sometimes shouting profanities homeless men of Portland who used to make me want to cross the street just to avoid possible eye contact.

Pretty ladies can sometimes earn unwanted attention.

Once someone got way too close for comfort wondering where I was going, sweetie, and followed me several blocks late at night.
My only way of handling the frightening situation was to nearly scream, YOU LOOK JUST LIKE THE ARTFUL DODGER! HAVE YOU SEEN THAT MOVIE?? WHERE'S YOUR FRIEND, OLIVER??
Needless to say my queer outburst stunned him long enough to redirect any unseemly behavior and I managed to get inside Guy's building with a CHEERIO, GOOD CHAP! and scurried away from the possible rapist with my heart beating double time and me wondering why the hell the first thing that came to my mind was a 70's musical.

I am a weird girl.

But that was months ago.
Since then, my interaction with creepy men on the street has turned into a Disney movie.
Like the opening to "Beauty and the Beast" where the townspeople are all wishing Belle a Bon Jour! the bums of Portland greet me each morning with similar songs of praise.
Good morning, beautiful.
Look at that red hair! You have beautiful red hair.
You look like a picture out of a book. You're so pretty.
Happy holidays, darling. Don't lose that smile! Love the glasses!

It's like, they all suddenly became extra grandpa's and uncles making my day brighter.

There's this area in NW near one of the shelters where I always park if there's no other spots available for blocks.
There are always spots available there because it's in front of this overhang where a lot of homeless men sleep.
And without a doubt, most people subscribe to the similar kinds of fears I once did about getting too close to the bums.
And it doesn't make us judgmental haters, there are some homeless people that can be downright mean when you don't hand over your "spare change."
And I'm not gonna lie, the ones screaming incoherent strings of sentences like some actor with turrets in a Pinter play can be downright scary.

But I'm glad that I have discovered a little hamlet of friendly street wanderers who look forward to our morning paths aligning as surely as I do.

Even when I've got no makeup on and I'm simply filling the meter, they always have something appreciative to say.

I gotta start baking them cookies or something.

Parental stamps of disapproval

Today I watched "The Family Stone" and realized a few things.

One, I don't know why I've always thought I liked that movie.
I think it's because it has three of my favorite actresses in it which distracted me from realizing I actually dislike the plot a great deal.

Sarah Jessica Parker arrives to meet her boyfriend's family at Christmas and they all instantly hate her.
How can you hate Carrie Bradshaw??
Their overwhelming disdain is irrationally bizarre and you have to choose sides between SJP and the entire rest of the cast.

Eventually, because life is so darn unpredictably full of twists, SJP's original BF ends up with her sister, the lovely Claire Danes and Sarah JP hooks up with his brother.
Why not?
Now the whole family accepts these new match ups and everyone lives happily ever after.

My point?

I remembered how awful it felt when Mr. Volcano's parents were as welcoming to me as the Stone family was towards Ms. Parker.

The first time he told his parents he wanted them to meet me they told him they were "still in mourning" over the loss of his ex wife.
Nice.
In mourning?!?
She didn't die, their love for each other did.

When I finally DID meet the Volcano clan they were all overwhelmingly weird and shy.
It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone and I'd stepped inside a zone where they all smiled and seemed polite enough but were secretly planting pins in my voodoo doll.

But I did gain points with the father when I told him to stop being a baby and just eat the damn fish already even if it didn't get cooked the way he thought it should.

I certainly know how to leave a lasting impression.

The real kicker, of course, was when we tried to arrange it so both of our parents could meet after that and the Mr. and Mrs. Volcano suddenly got too busy to attend a Christmas Eve church service as one big family.

Oh yeah.
I could feel the love.
Even the baby Jesus rolled his eyes.

Is it any wonder that this blissful match of ours was doomed to fail?
And is it so surprising that Mr. Volcano had to flee the state to get away from such a parasitical family?

Sigh.

That was not a good year.
The man was uncertain about me and his parents wished I was someone else.
Not exactly happily ever after.

But then I thought about this Christmas.
And how when Guy told his Mom about me she couldn't wait to meet me.
And when she did she was so overwhelmingly loving and warm she invited me to come visit anytime.

And I thought about how much my parents love Guy.
And how Mom and I agree this is the only man I've dated that my dad has actually liked.

Sometimes it takes parents time to warm up to the people you love.
But sometimes when they're in tune with you, they know when something's right and when it's a mismatch.

I'm thankful that for the first time, the stars have aligned and I have found a decent guy whose parents like me.

Now his parents and mine?
Oh, just a few liberal Beavers fans breaking bread with a couple of conservative Ducks fans.
No prob.
None at all.

I just better make sure there's plenty of wine.

The Problem with Perfection

I work in the wedding industry.
I went to Diamond School.
My friend pointed out that even though I went from makeup to jewelry, I'm still playing dress up.
It suits me.

The difference between the two is pretty monumental, however.
In cosmetics, women are shopping for themselves.
It's sheer vanity and daily routine but it's individual.
They reach for their refill of Bronze Goddess bronzer and sparkly lip gloss because it makes their own heart happy.
Rarely is a woman buying eyeliner because it's what her man wants or even because she feels the pressures of society to wear it.

In the hippie city that is Portlandia?
P-L-E-A-S-E.
It's cooler to NOT wear makeup.
It means you're too deep for such superficiality.
Of course, you could seriously stand to use some highlights and mascara, but that's besides the point.

In the diamond biz women are searching to satisfy some greater expectation that extends beyond the bounds of concealer and lipstick.
Something in them is convinced they will never be satisfied until they find the perfect ring, that, of course, is nothing like their sisters or best friends. And one that is fitting in direct reflection to the love of their man and the significance of their relationship.
They believe their importance to him is mirrored on their left hand.

The wedding itself carries the same weight of expectation and significance.
Even though it is really a glorified party.
But people shell out enough money on a few hours that could secure a home.
The pursuit for pure perfection is so great that when inevitably the flowers for the ceremony are wrong or the Maid of Honor is too hungover to walk down the aisle, the day is ruined.

It's an irrational set up for disappointment and yet women do it all the time.

One girl came in to the store with her boyfriend to look at rings.
They're planning a trip to the Bahamas at the end of the year and she made a comment when he's stepped away that she hoped he'd propose while they were there.
It's like setting herself up for the let down of the century!

Why do women do this?
Shouldn't the fact she is going on a trip to THE BAHAMAS be cause enough to celebrate and rejoice?
Why does she have to take something that is already fantastic and add more expectation on top of it?
It's as if there is a chronic dissatisfaction buried inside of every woman in regards to her relationship.
No matter how much is good or even great there is always more she wants.

He said, 'I love you' but he didn't say 'You look Beautiful.'
He made reservations for dinner but it wasn't at your favorite restaurant.
You had sex but it wasn't nearly exciting enough.
He bought you flowers but they weren't nearly as expensive as the ones your co worker received.
He bought you jewelry but it wasn't a ring.
Do you see what I'm getting at??

And the worst part is that we all encourage one another!
Where men run around trying to prove to other men that their penis is larger we women run around trying to prove our men and relationships are more flawless than anyone else's!
People covet a rare, flawless diamond and the price tag that comes with it, seeing it as a badge earned and deserved.

But shouldn't the loving commitment, the devotion of a man who stays by your side in spite of all those times you go bat shit crazy be far more important than any thing, any ceremony, any loving words that could ever be uttered?

Do I think women should settle for less than all they deserve?
Of course not.
We're fucking goddesses and should be treated as such.

But I wonder if instead of always wishin' and hopin' and dreamin' for the things that aren't, our energy was devoted to adorin' and appreaciatin' and delightin' in all that is today, we'd be happier with happier men and less debt. And less divorces.

I'm killing the Cinderella story right now.
Because you know what?
I'm not fucking Cinderella.
And I don't need Prince Charming to save me from a lonely life of hateful isolation.
I'm a happy, contented, fulfilled woman who happens to love the idea of sharing her fabulous life with the kind of handsome man who is captivated by her.

All the little romantic details?
They're like the countless tubes of lipgloss scattered in my purses.
Each fabulous in its own right, but without them my lips are still seductively delicious.

Some perfection needs little to perfect it.
Remember that.
It's sure to save heartaches and headaches.